Poppa - a rare blog from Cameron...

Paper aeroplanes. That's what I remember. Not the regular dart, but a kind with intricate folds and tearing a piece that would become the body and tail of the plane. He always tore that part, never cut it, but it was always straight. You didn't throw those planes, you launched them, and they flew.

He made me a bush bass once. I think it was something for school. He used a special string. He got the string from the looms at the place where he worked as a security guard... He told me that he wished he'd had the chance to finish school and learn a trade like his brothers, but he had to leave school and work because things were difficult. It was the depression. He slept in a shed in the fields with a gun to protect the produce. He hated that. He felt bad that he had to stop people who were hungry from getting something to eat, but if he didn't stop them then he and others would go hungry.

He had a bicycle that he rode to the fields.

He didn't go to war because he had to stay and grow food.

The string was stored in his garage - there was so much stuff in there, how did the car fit? That great brown car. Was it a Renault? He took me to soccer in it and watched me play. It was that game when the ball bounced over my head. I was embarrassed about that. But he loved watching the soccer.

The garage was where he made the billy cart for us. It was great! I think he made one for Angus and Clint too. Steering was with feet and strings and a lever brake with a spring that worked on the back wheel. We rode the cart down the path in the back yard, down toward the clothes line.

The clothes line was an old one. The concrete it was set into had 'Pat' and 'Stan' written in it - is that right? It took me ages to work out what that referred to.

Below the clothes line was where we played 'sorries'. The bat and ball game where we said sorry every time we mis-hit the ball. We laughed a lot, but had to be careful not to hit the ball into the plants too much, and if it went into the plants you had to step carefully over them onto the planks of wood that ran between the rows of flowers. The bats were wood with a cork coating on the paddle.

There was that big tree that was to the right of the the cubby house, the cubby that he made for mum and her sisters when they were young - a perfect little house. The tree was where he built us our tree-house. He put up a thick rope so we could swing from the tree house. We would swing back and forth. I took some photos with the an old camera. They were blurry, but he was smiling.

I don't know where those photos are.

If we stayed on Friday night we ate fish and chips from the shop. We always had buttered bread. He never spoke at the dinner table.

He would come home late, very late, from his job. We would hear him come in while we were in bed. He would have been a good security guard - he was so tall.

Oh, typewriters... I remember typewriters on my back and on my chest. It made me laugh until it hurt.

Later he told me jokes. I loved the jokes. He would get them from the radio I think, and he would save them up until he saw me. I loved them. Sometimes they were a bit risque. Not bad, but for an older audience, which I had become. They really made me crack up. I loved them. They were a special highlight of visits and of Christmas.

So tall, always gentle, soft spoken, sharp humour that surprised most of us I think - it certainly surprised me. A lovely man who became a lovely old man. He loved the dog. The last photo I have with him is with the dog, just after he moved into the home. It's in the gazebo that out the front.


Poppa - I started calling him 'Pop' in the last couple of years. I wonder why?

I've just made one of those paper planes, to make sure I could remember.